Chinese medicine and cycling are two of the passions of my life. I have practiced Chinese medicine for over four decades now, and cycled for more than six. One of the most precious gifts cycling has presented me with during all this time is a space for silent contemplation. Spending hours riding alone from here to there for no other reason than to ride makes the mind wander in aimless yet strangely creative ways. Recently, during one of these contemplative rides, it occurred to me that cycling might be an excellent way for explaining some key concepts of Chinese thought relevant to medicine.
Without these concepts Chinese medicine would not have become what it is today. Yet, many contemporary practitioners have never heard of them, or only know them vaguely. Those that do know them, may have come to understand them on the basis of problematic or wrong translations. Many think that such philosophical concepts have no bearing on the actual practice of medicine. So why bother?
To some extend I agree. It is not at all necessary to be familiar with most of these concepts to become a good Chinese medicine practitioner. However, I also believe that knowing them considerably shortens the odds, and that they tie us closer to the tradition we claim to represent.
By moving these concepts away from China and locating them in the context of cycling I try to make the unfamiliar more familiar. Few people in the West today are philosophers or speak Chinese. Many of us, however, have cycled at some stage in our lives. I hope this will create for the reader a similar opportunity that actual cycling gives to me: namely, free the mind to allow for new, unexpected, and productive connections to be made.
What I will not do is dwell at any length on the conceptual history of these terms. I will provide a few references for further reading at the end of each blog, and, where appropriate, add a few notes. But, for once, complexity is not what I am aiming for.
Climbing mountains to discover li 理 (pattern, principle) in the process of gewu 格物 ( investigating things)
With that in mind, this - the first of several such blogposts - looks at two of the most central concepts in the history of Chinese thought during the last millennium: li 理, widely rendered as the “principles” or “patterns” that constitute the vitality of the cosmos; and gewu 格物, commonly translated as the “investigation of things” that leads us to discover these principles and patterns. I will explore both of these concepts by following a cyclist riding their way up a mountain.
I am the kind of cyclist who likes to do just that. Riding - or “climbing” in cycle parlance - roads that take you up a thousand or two-thousand meters in the course of an hour or two. Here in Europe, where I live, climbing these mountain roads usually leads you over a pass (a col in French, a puerto in Spanish, or a passo in Italian). Occasionally it’s a cul-de-sac leading to a skiing resort, or some antennas. Sometimes, there is nothing.
Whatever there is at the top, almost all of these climbs tend to follow the same pattern. You start your ride in a town or village at the foot of the mountain. This can be a city like Nice or Torino, or a small hamlet somewhere in the Pyrenees. Once you leave the build-up area behind, you usually cycle through some woodland, which eventually gives way to pastures. It is all very green and often (un)pleasantly cool, but as the trees along the side of the road begin to disappear, so do the shadows. If the sun shines (hopefully, it does), it means the ride will be getting hotter, and you will be getting thirstier. If the climb goes beyond two-thousand meters in altitude, craggy rock eventually replaces the pastures, until you finally reach the top.
If it is a busy mountain pass, there will usually be a restaurant or bar, and often also a lake. More often, you just find a sign with the name of the pass and the altitude you are at, or, if you climbed up somewhere few people go, nothing at all. You admire the view and hopefully are at piece with the world. Most likely, you will also feel tired, and glad that for the next little while your ride will take you downhill. Unless, that is, you went up on a cold day, or it rains. In that case you will be freezing on the descent, worry that you may skid on the wet asphalt, and have no opportunity to marvel at any of the stunning landscape now shrouded in mist and cloud.
Each mountain road is different: different in altitude, length, gradient, and the actual and perceived effort it takes to cycle up from wherever you started off. The same pass will look and feel different in the heat of summer than it does on a chilly and bright autumn day. Riding on your own makes it a very different type of adventure than riding up in a group, or together with a friend chatting all the way to the top. And yet, all mountains are also the same. When you have ridden up only one or two, you generally do not appreciate that yet. It will take you five, or ten, or twenty ascents depending how tuned in you are. Eventually, however, you do realise that all mountains really are the same despite their many differences, and that riding up a mountain invariably follows the same pattern.
This new knowledge does not make riding up mountains boring. On the contrary. Knowing that you are likely a long way from the top as long as you are in the trees, helps you pace yourself better. Over time, you develop an eye for where the pass will be even though you cannot see it. You get a feeling for how steep it will be, and how long it will take you to get there. All of that helps to manage your effort and focus on the landscape instead of yourself. It is at that point that your mind begins to wander …
That sameness of all the mountains is their li: the pattern of how mountains are that you discover as you keep cycling up them. Each mountain, of course, also has their very own li or pattern. Its slopes may be gentle or steep, which alters the succession of woodland, pastures and rock. A Spanish mountain has a different li, than one located in.Taiwan, two countries I have spent cycling in this year. In Spain you meet cows and horses. In Taiwan you ride through the smell of incense from the many temples at the side of the road. Yet, all of these different li are merely variants of the basic li of all of the mountains in this world you can cycle up.
Which makes riding up mountains a return of the always same, but because that li comes in so many different shapes and forms also never ever boring. Especially as the li of the mountain will, in our human experience of it, always be interacting with many other li: the li of wind, rain and clouds, the li of the seasons, and the li of the cultures in which the mountain happens to be - all of which have their own distinctive patterns.
Chinese thinkers referred to the process by which we get to know these patters as “investigating things.” You can do such investigation by way of direct personal experience. You can also, however, borrow the experience of others by listening to their stories, reading their books, or watching a video. Sometimes that can be as good or even better than personal experience. Some people simply have greater sensibilities and are better in detecting patterns; or they have a gift for distilling the li out there in the world out there into words, or sound, or images. In ancient China, these people were referred to as “sages,” but with the right kind of effort everyone can become such a sage. Try riding up a few mountains and you will see what I mean.
It therefore does not matter which route you take. Once you see the pattern, you have grasped the li of whatever it is you are interested in, be that mountains, or illness, or calligraphy, or soap operas. Moreover, like a cyclist, who, having grasped the li of mountain(s), becomes better at riding up them and, as a result, will enjoy doing so more and more, grasping the li of something generally makes you better at engaging with it. It also makes you value the experience more and more.
Investigating things thus is a different process from getting to know things in an abstract way. Li is abstract knowledge that can be communicated with words, but it is invariably also a knowledge that involves feelings and sentiments. It is therefore not knowledge developed for the sake of domination (how can you want to dominate something for which you have developed feelings?), but knowledge aimed at allowing you to adapt to the world out there of which you are a part. If you are a cyclist who likes to ride up mountains, then mountains are an important part of that world.
Cycling is, of course, not the only way you can grasp the li of mountain(s). You can do so by hiking, too, by flying over them, or by studying geology or botany. Each of these kinds of investigation will reveal the li of mountain(s) somewhat differently, but ultimately you will be discovering the same pattern(s).
Most importantly, once you have discovered the li of mountains, of mountain weather, of human physiology, and whatever else goes into climbing a mountain bike, you never ever can predict with absolute certainty how your ride is going to develop. Amongst many other factors, there is your own agency as a human being (your nature or disposition to Chinese thinkers) that will influence that. And if human beings have agency, so do other things. For they are all constituted of the same qi.
From cycling to medicine
Taken together, all the different li of all the different things in the universe constitute the world as it is. Chinese thinkers did of course not use the language or experience of cycling to describe these principles and patterns. They did so with the help of terms like yin/yang, the five phases, the sixty-four hexagrams, and qi. The zang/fu are a way for capturing the li of how human body-persons integrate into the cosmos, and the liu jing 六經, or six divisions, are an attempt at fathoming the li of illness.
Being able to fathom the li of our bodies in health and disease with the help of these concepts allows us to treat disease. Such knowledge does not, however, provide us with certainty. Experienced cyclists know the mountains, and they know themselves. Yet, riding up a mountain road you have climbed many times before can still offer up surprises - a dog, for instance, that appears out of nowhere and that was never there before. To which one has to adapt on the spot.
Experienced physicians know all the principles and patterns described in the classics. But not all pathogenic qi will stick to what is described in these books. That is why investigating things in order to understand their li can only ever be the start of becoming an expert, be that a cyclist or a physician.
Notes
Although an ancient term, li 理 became central to Chinese thought only with the rise of Neo-confucianism, and even more specifically that of the so-called Cheng-Zhu school (so named after its two main philosophers, Cheng Yi and Zhu Xi). In Chinese, one therefore does not speak of Neo-confucianism, but of the “learning of patterns/principles” (lixue 理學), or the “learning of the Way” (daoxue 道學). The implication here is that if one has understood the patterns/principles that make up the cosmos, one has grasped the Way (dao 道).
If you are interested in exploring these topics in more depth, two of the best introductions to Neo-confucian thinking are Peter Bol’s “This Culture of Ours”: Intellectual Transitions in T’ang and Sung China (Stanford University Press, 1992), and Philip Ivanhoe’s Three Streams: Confucian Reflections on Learning and the Moral Heart-Mind in China, Korea, and Japan (Oxford University Press, 2016).
Owing to the importance of Neo-confucian thinking in Chinese culture over the last millennium, it profoundly shaped the development also of Chinese medicine. That, however, is another story. Still, for practitioners with no knowledge of Chinese or medical history, two things are important to know.
First, the term li 理, which I have translated as patterns or principles, is not the same as the term gang 綱, also translated as “principles” in, for instance, the “eight principles” (ba gang 八綱). These principles are the structures by which one organises knowledge or texts. They can reflect li, but they do not equate to li.
Second, I consider the occasional translation of li 理 as “theory” to be not only misleading but wrong. This translation is based on the modern term lilun 理論, which is a term invented specifically to translate the western term “theory.” It looks and sounds old, but is in fact very new.
Theory, in our western understanding of the term, refers to purely mental concepts or ideas. In Chinese thinking “purely mental” is impossible, unless the spirit departs the human form. For that you have to become a Daoist immortal or maybe an AI engine like Chat-GPT. LI, as we saw above, is always an experiential knowledge of something that, invariably, involves not only the mind but also the body.
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